How do you make the invisible visible? Astrophysicists face this challenge daily. Unlike astronomers who view stars through telescopes, astrophysicists study cosmic particles that are too small or dark to see directly.
Every so often, particle physics communicators from labs around the world gather to swap strategies for getting people interested in science. At the group's April meeting in Japan, the big hit was toilet paper.
For a growing number of so-called Nerdcore rappers, the message is that people need to support basic research and math and science education if they want to hand future generations a nation worth bragging about.
What opera and physics may have in common, more than anything else, is their tendency to make most people cringe or fall asleep. Can an avant-garde opera that compares self-exploration to the physics of multiple dimensions invigorate audiences?
Chugging along in the background, old physics machines are the workhorses behind many cutting-edge projects, from the world's most powerful X-ray laser to the Large Hadron Collider and a lab that tests microchips bound for Mars.
Canning, pickling, drying, freezing -- physicists wish there were an easy way to preserve their hard-won data so future generations of scientists, armed with more powerful tools, can take advantage of it. They've launched an international search for solutions.
Since its launch in June 2008, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has shed light on some of the brightest, most explosive events in the universe and opened tantalizing windows into dark matter and the nature of space-time.
I am not a physicist, scientist, or any other ist that I can think of, but Fermilab has been a recurring theme in my life. It began as an interesting footnote back when my husband and I became a couple, and unexpectedly jumped back into our lives 31 years later.
Particle physics is a field that spends an awful lot of time concentrating on the past and the future. That's not a criticism, just a reflection of the long-term nature of the science.
A long time ago in a national laboratory far, far away some physicists looked around their workplace and thought of dark forces. Not dark matter; not dark energy; but the ultimate force from the dark side: Darth Vader.
